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The Luminous Podcast is a discussion series featuring artists, designers, and engineers active in the new media art scenes. Join the host Robb Pope, cofounder of Digital Ambiance and longtime visual artist, on a journey exploring the landscape of modern new-media arts. The guests range from VJ’s to Sculptural Artists, Lighting techs, VR Designers and everyone in between. The discussions featured on the podcast are an honest, in-depth look at the lives and challenges facing today's most accomplished and respected voices in the new media, immersive, and visual arts scenes.
Episodes
Wednesday Feb 10, 2021
Wednesday Feb 10, 2021
Good morning people! In this episode, I sit down with my longtime friend Rich Trapani, or Rich DDT as residents of the Bay Area know him. Originally out of my hometown, Boston, he’s made a name for himself out on the West Coast running an immersive new media salon called Lovetech. It’s a dance party slash multimedia arts expose where tinkerers, artists, and other participants can hang out, socialize, and expose each other to new types of tech, grab a drink, or get down on the dance floor to some of the scenes most innovative producers. It’s been happening for about 10 years now until Covid threw a wrench into the live nightlife scene.
Rich is really active in the new media arts scene and was one of the artists selected to produce custom work for the new Meow Wolf property in Vegas. He’s spent time working with Illuminate the Arts and Anticlockwise producing permanent placemaking features. We talk about the state of immersive theater and how COVID might fundamentally change the shape of counterculture going forward. It’s a really interesting conversation and I think you’ll enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed having it!
Links & Social Media
Tuesday Nov 10, 2020
Tuesday Nov 10, 2020
Welcome back, everybody! This episode is with Bob Bonniol, the founder of Mode Studios in Seattle, and a longtime inspiration to me. He’s a legend in the live show production industry, being at the forefront of new media technologies as they made their way onto the stage. Coming up in the Theatrical world, he was an early adopter of projection mapping and the use of complex control systems to achieve new effects that pushed the envelope on Broadway and later in the concert touring world.
Our conversation was a short one but a fun one. I’ve been waiting a while to have a chance to talk with Bob and it was fun to just sit back and see where things went. Evidently, we’re both big fans of futurists because that’s exactly where this conversation ended up! I’ll let you listen and we’ll get right into it. Hope you enjoy!
Links & Social Media
Tuesday Sep 08, 2020
Tuesday Sep 08, 2020
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Luminous Arts Podcast! Today I’m talking with Sofia Aronov, an Italian experiential designer and new media artist living and working in NYC. I met Sofia on a trip to Brooklyn back in 2019. She was working for Fake Love, the experiential advertising company by The New York Times. In January 2020, she became Senior Experiential Designer in the Experience Team of PepsiCo Design and Innovation Center. Originally from Milan, she’s had a very international journey to get to where she is today. Like me, she’s obsessed with creating interactive installation art and using technology to communicate in unique ways.
We have a great conversation about how our work has changed since COVID, how the creative process is adapting to life in isolation, and how we can all stay connected despite the shift in the social paradigm. We only had about an hour to talk and I think we both could have kept going for a lot longer. It was a great conversation and I’m definitely looking forward to the next time we get to hang out.
Links & Social Media
Wednesday Aug 19, 2020
Wednesday Aug 19, 2020
Hey everyone, welcome to the 13th episode of the Luminous Arts Podcast! Steve Lieberman is a longtime friend and inspiration of mine. He’s a lighting designer who’s work is world-renowned in the festival stage and high-end nightclub arenas. I met Steve back in the early 2000s when I was working with Vello Virkhause at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami. Since then we’ve kept in touch and I’ve always been inspired by the work that he does.
I really enjoyed this conversation as it was a rare opportunity for me to talk about the art of stage lighting design. Steve gets it, he’s been doing it for 25 years and that’s the world I came from when I was younger. Using light as a medium is kind of an arcane artform, and there are very few people that I have the opportunity to talk to that are steeped in the practice. Steve is a true creative and his work is at the pinnacle of the stage design industry. This is one of my favorite conversations to date and I think you’ll like it too!
Links & Social Media
Tuesday Jul 07, 2020
Tuesday Jul 07, 2020
Forest and I have been friends for almost 12 years. We were talking about art projects before I started Digital Ambiance and before he was an Art Director at Deviant Art down in LA. He’s a prolific illustrator and street artist who’s skills with a paintbrush, spray can, and tablet are unparalleled among the many artists I know. He is based in Oakland, where he leads DRAWEVERYWHERE STUDIOS on a range of creative collaborations.
We’ve had the opportunity to work together a number of times, but most closely on the fleet of Galactic Jungle Art Cars we built for Burning Man back in 2015.
More than just a good friend, Forest is a truly remarkable person. After his first big break, post MFA, designing for DeviantArt, he leveled up his passion for the facilitation of community building and switched lanes out of the “art world” and into the realm of science and technology. On an adventure in the woods, his path crossed with the founders of an SF aerospace firm called Planet Labs. He boldly pitched them on the idea of painting on their spaceships, they went for it. He founded and directed Planet’s Artist in Residence program for almost 5 years. As the first artist in an impressive alumni, he produced the integration of 600+ illustrations onto the sides of Planet’s Dove satellites, and murals on rocket ships that would launch into orbit. As far as we know it’s the first example of an art show in space! How do you top that?
Currently, he is the Principal Artist on the Google AI Quantum team in Santa Barbara, where he has founded an Artist in Residence program in conjunction with their quantum computing team. Stearns has developed a quantum visual language for Google. This illuminated language is being applied throughout the project from site-specific murals in the laboratories and unique canvases on of each quantum computers in the data center.
A future-facing sci-fi lab filled with huge hanging machines that resemble steampunk jellyfish may seem like an unorthodox place to find artwork,
...but it is a perfect collaboration for Stearns’ illustrative works that are the love child of the nature-based High Sierra mountains and undulating abstracted Tron-Esque organisms.
When I stop and think about the trajectory of his career and his life with his beautiful partner and daughter, it’s one of the most interesting paths I’ve ever seen an artist take to achieve success.
Stoked to share this conversation with you all, Forest is an amazing person and his success deserves to be recognized.
Links & Social Media
Thursday Jun 25, 2020
Thursday Jun 25, 2020
In this episode of Luminous Arts, I talk with Mark Slee, the creator of LX Studio, the software behind the Tree of Tenere. He’s an accomplished producer and light artist who runs an art gallery out of San Francisco. We’re both quarantined in separate corners of the world due to the Coronavirus, with Mark in Montreal and me in the British Virgin Islands. Fortunately, remote podcasting is a thing and our connection was solid, so hopefully, it’ll sound pretty good.
We talk about the role of art in different parts of the world, how he became involved with Symmetry Labs, how he developed his software and other things. I’ve been looking forward to talking with Mark for a long time as he’s a prolific artist in the Bay Area community and light art scene. He’s a cool guy, and it’s a great conversation. I really think you’ll dig it.
Originally Published - April 1, 2020 This episode of the Podcast is with Gabriel Dunne, an interactive multimedia artist and code wizard who’s been a staple of the Bay Area new-media arts scene for more than a decade. He’s one of the original members of the OOOShiny list, a gathering place and discussion forum for some of the most prolific new-media artists worldwide. This group is actually how I tapped into our community here in the Bay and it’s one of my favorite resources to find people doing interesting things with technology. We have a really good conversation and dive deep into some of the social issues affecting the Bay Area arts community. We talk about how the scene has evolved and changed over the decade-plus he’s been involved in creating art here and how his career as an artist has evolved. This is a great episode, one of my favorites thus far, and I really think you’ll enjoy listening to it.
Links & Social Media
Tuesday May 05, 2020
Tuesday May 05, 2020
Well, that was an excellent conversation. I just finished a long episode of the Luminous Arts with Timo Lejeune, a light artist based in the Netherlands. His group, Lumus Instruments, combines light and music in integrated performances using a custom software stack that he’s creating. One part sculptural lighting artists, one part music producers, he’s creating really unique installations that synchronize the lighting and the music by creating both from the same software. The main outlet for his work is the art festival scene in Europe and we have a great time talking about our experiences with festival culture and how light art is represented in that world, and the various ways to make your way as a light artist. Timo is a super cool guy and I’m looking forward to hanging out in person! Hope you enjoy listening to the podcast as much as I enjoyed recording it and reach out to him if you like his work (Links are below).
Links & Social Media
Wednesday Apr 01, 2020
Wednesday Apr 01, 2020
Hey everybody! This episode of the Podcast is with Gabriel Dunne, an interactive multimedia artist and code wizard who’s been a staple of the Bay Area New-Media Arts scene for more than a decade. He’s one of the original members of the OOOShiny list, a gathering place and discussion forum for some of the most prolific new-media artists worldwide. This group is actually how I tapped into our community here in the Bay and it’s one of my favorite resources to find people doing interesting things with technology.
We have a really good conversation and dive deep into some of the social issues affecting the Bay Area arts community. We talk about how the scene has evolved and changed over the decade-plus he’s been involved in creating art here and how his career as an artist has evolved. This is a great episode, one of my favorites thus far, and I really think you’ll enjoy listening to it.
Links & Social Media
Wednesday Feb 12, 2020
Wednesday Feb 12, 2020
Keith and I met for the first time during my trip to Vegas this year for the LDI Conference. I learned about his work as a VJ in the festival scene years ago and at Burning Man this year he started dating one of my installation techs! When they both moved to Vegas together so that Keith could take a job-creating custom visuals for Melt Creative, I knew I most likely had a place to crash during LDI (and a new podcast episode!)
We start the conversation out with some details about where Keith’s journey as a concert visualist began and we wind our way through various topics like how the VJing scene has changed and evolved over time, what it’s like working as a full-time festival VJ, and where he sees things going in the future.
This was a great conversation and I’m stoked that Keith and I finally got to sit down and talk!
Links & Social Media
Tuesday Nov 19, 2019
Tuesday Nov 19, 2019
Hey everyone, welcome to the Luminous Podcast! This week I did my first remote episode of the show, which actually went really smoothly. I sat down (across the country) with Tyler Kicera, Senior Director of the Kinetics Department at Tait Towers. They’re responsible for some of the most incredible kinetic stage designs and permanent installations in the world, including the London 2012 Olympics, U2, Queen, & Rodger Waters world tours, all of Deadmouse’s ridiculous stages, The Wynn in Las Vegas, and so many more absolutely bonkers installations. Tyler and I were supposed to present this year at LDI on a panel discussion on architainment and feature design, but it kind of fell apart at the last minute. Oh well. We decided he should definitely do an episode of the podcast so we could get to know each other and at least talk for a bit. We had a fascinating conversation and we got into some great side topics about some of his other passions, road racing in Spec Miata competitions, maintaining work-life balance, and how having kids can change your perspective and priorities. He’s a genuinely cool guy and I’m bummed we won’t get to do our panel this year, but it was great to get to hang out for a bit and get to know each other! Hope you enjoy the conversation.